Online strategy for scheduling by-product gas supply

The more efficient use of by-product gas has always been a hot issue in the iron and steel making process. The gas generation during production process is stochastic and hard to predict accurately. Specifically, how to regulate the supply of by-product gas from gas holder to power plant in the scheduling period to maximize the total profit of gas reutilization is presented in this paper. In response to this objective, online algorithm will be applied here to analyze the optimal strategy, which manages the by-product gas supply scheduling using online strategy and competitive analysis. We give the competitive ratio´s lower bound of the problem, and analyze the properties of algorithms, then give the BAC-algorithm with a competitive ratio equals to γ/(γ-β(ω_max-ω_min)/(ω_max+ω_min)). Then the data from a certain iron and steel industry are collected to test the competitive ratio of online strategy. The BAC-algorithm is effective at increasing the total profit of planning horizon.